Another flash of lightning washed across the land, followed by a deep rumble that made bones quiver and hearts still in their chests, reminding the mortals that there was a vast difference between managing elemental jutsu and the elements themselves.
As if waiting for a suitable thunder to announce it, the downpour started in earnest.
"So," I started, "I can't avoid thinking that you're not here by chance, and given that I leave no tracks to be followed, I suspect that Iwa has bought your little club' services to kill Hatake."
The shark-man let out a belly laugh at that, his bandaged monster of a sword coming to rest against his shoulder, and while neither of their stances was threatening, I knew extremely well how much a single shinobi could be lethal while smiling and behaving like your best friend, so I kept my guard up.
"Daiki-san." Itachi impassible voice called my name, as if to reprimand me for my cheerful tone.
"Honorifics, really?" I closed my eyes, letting my chakra seep into the water around me in order to keep track of my surroundings, "I expected to see you gallivant around with Shisui, not a Swordsman, to be honest."
I tilted my head, letting the unspoken question linger in the air. I remembered my own surprise when the Hokage let my team know of the Uchiha massacre, and how Itachi and Shushui were responsible for it, leaving behind only a broken, young Sasuke.
My fingers moved quickly at my side in Konoha standard -I know. Coup.- It was less eloquent than I would have liked, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
When I opened my eyes, the pinwheels in Itachi' eyes swirled together, morphing into the strange triskelion-like design of his Mangeyko Sharingan, and an instant later, the rain was gone, the thunders no longer rumbled, and the colours around me were a mixture of red and black, while I felt like I was a drawing in two dimensions being stared at by the artist that created it.
"Why am I not surprised that you know?" Itachi spoke tiredly over a plateau of a blood-red, his own features black with white highlights that made him look like something drawn with charcoal.
"In hindsight, it was obvious enough, especially since you asked me to look after Sasuke." I shrugged, "But seriously, where is Shisui? From what I've heard, he was a merry fellow."
"Shisui asked me to kill him three days before the..." Itachi impassible facade cracked then, and he fell into silence.
I frowned, putting together what I knew, both with my foreknowledge and what I observed on my own.
"He realized that a coup would have doomed you all, but he couldn't bring himself to act against his family... and you used some scary good genjutsu to make him look alive... That's why you crippled some genin, to show him alive?"
Itachi simply looked at me, and I took his silence as assent.
"His eyes?" I asked with a frown, suddenly wary, if I could be brainwashed I'd need a lot of more precautions.
"Destroyed." he narrowed his eyes at me: "How?" he asked laconically.
I shrugged: "Sasuke is okay, by the way. A bit withdrawn, a bit lonely, but I tried to make him a little more human than you left him as." I knowingly ignored his question.
Itachi didn't flinch, but inside of his genjutsu, the sky wavered. "We still need Hatake." he resumed after a few instants of silence.
"You know the story of his Sharingan?" at Itachi's nod, I grinned: "You are working for Obito, who has taken Madara's name in a nihilistic suicide mission that piggybacks your Leader-sama's quest of Biju-collecting."
Itachi, impassible as he always was, recoiled from me, and his eyes narrowed dangerously.
"How?" he asked again, forcing me to go over a summary of the history my metaknowledge granted me, and maybe I enjoyed seeing him grit his teeth here and there, well, rationally I realized that he had been placed into an impossible position, and that he had been basically been raised to be a sociopath.
I could even recognize that the fewer Uchiha with bullshit eyes around, the better for everyone else, but he still murdered a whole clan which included plenty of children.
I had just murdered fifty shinobi in order to take Kakashi's eye in the smallest window of opportunity that I had ever seen, and I knew that I was far from being a paragon of virtue, but given the world that I was into, I was almost Gandhi.
"And you know all of this... how?" he prodded me again when I didn't answer.
I shrugged again: "You can't rally double-check most of what I've told you without giving away your position, but it's reliable, trust me."
"You ask me to trust you with something like this?"
"You trusted me with Sasuke." I reminded him, "Is the rest of the world really more important than that to you?"
That stole the wind from his sails: "It's been years ago." he tried to deflect, unfortunately for him, his impassible poker face could do very little to hide what I knew from the manga, and so I knew that I had him on my boat.
"When will your club of megalomaniac start moving for the Biju?" I asked, bringing up the far more pressing issue.
"The Nekomata is still unaccounted for, so until Kumo figures out how to chain it again, we'll be waiting."
"I thought that one had to wait three years for each tail, or something like that." I poked, causing him to rise an eyebrow sarcastically, as if he was pointing out how random my statement was.
"I killed Orochimaru." I spoke calmly, "Likely there is something interesting in his bases, but I'm not eager about trying them out, nor I have really the time or resources to do so. But Kabuto needs to die, and I've had difficulties in pinning him down, but then again, I lack your club's net of spies."
"I can probably steer myself and Kisame over those." he nodded, tilting his head sideways immediately after, silently questioning my next moves.
"I need to keep the war away from the civilians, and in the aftermath they'll move to demand more rights or whatever they wish."
"You've been fomenting unrest with your writings since your time as Guardian?" he asked, his unesplicably keen mind immediately collecting what he knew of me and making me nod.
"Everybody with half a brain has realized that wars are really bad for everybody business, but shinobi keep falling for them, mostly because all they're thought to do is kill, steal or something along those lines." I explained.
"And the whole Lord of the Nation system is maintained only to have civilians with enough money to put out missions fr the Villages.
When is the last time you've heard of a civilian claiming for blood? There will eventually be a change in how the countries are run.
The system Kage-Daimyo is broken, but differently from Madara's 'let's pull a giant genjutsu over everyone', your Leader-sama's 'let's create a deterrent capable of killing everything', and Jiraya's 'the next generation will do it', I realize that it's not really up to us, but to everyone.
So, wherever the people' will shall steer the events, the world will go."
"What if they'll still go for war and agony?" Itachi was far from being an idiot, and immediately understood what I was implying, even if democracy proper wasn't a concept particularly known in the Elemental Nations.
I shrugged: "Eventually it will happen, but it will be their choice, and the more people are made aware of their options besides war, the least wars we'll witness."
I eyed around Itachi's illusion, taking stock of the strange landscape: "I'll probably pass through Kiri eventually, I hear Mei Terumi is sharper than most, maybe there will be a chance to give them a leg-up about the form of government available."
"Tetsu no Kuni has never started a war." Itachi objected: "Their government is plenty effective."
"They're a small country surrounded by shinobi, a big bad wolf outside the room makes everybody inside agree to team up, it's not a viable option." I shook my head, having already considered that angle.
We remained in silence for several seconds, as I looked for words clear and concise enough to showcase my solution.
"Change of the person comes from within..." Itachi tilted his head again, "Change for the world comes from the population?" he speculated, making me grin as an answer.
"Pretty much."
"I never quite understood the sheer scope of your ambition, had I?" Itachi, maybe for the first time since his last days in Konoha, smiled a bit
"Steer clear of Sasuke for a while still, yeah? Let him understand that the world is far bigger than the hate you cultivated within him." that made the thin smile disappear like frost under a fireball.
Still, almost begrudgingly, he nodded, and it was enough for me. Even if his mind was likely analyzing the possibility of finding his brother among the several fronts and getting close enough to spy on him.
"I'll pretend that you broke through my genjutsu." he finally spoke.
"Would you be better able to move without Kisame?" I asked.
"He is..." he hesitated.
"A friend?" I completed for him, making him half-shrug as an answer.
"Very few nuke-nin are trustworthy enough to find someone not completely disagreeable." he stated, "Even so, Kisame betrayed his village."
"And there are no reasons whatsoever that would ever make you consider betrayal?" I retorted as kindly as I could.
Life as a shinobi was complex even under an emotional point of view, if not for my own larger perspective, I would have likely succumbed to the mentality that depicted everyone but y comrades as an enemy of my village.
"Who would be asked to become your partner if he died?"
"If I were to play a bit with my report... you. Once you passed some talk with Can you manage to portray yourself as someone that simply wants good fights? Is what I'd be best able to sell to Leader-sama."
Itachi's mind once more ran ahead of mine, showcasing yet another deep cover situation, but I could immediately see the kind of opportunities it would open.
...
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